Why Fascism? by Edward Conze and Ellen Wilkinson 1935
The difference between ‘National Socialism’ and ‘Marxist Socialism’ is not on the stress given to national as against international Socialism, but goes deeper into the social basis of the two movements. In so far as National Socialism is socialistic, it desires to include all the classes which they have inherited from the capitalist nation – not only workers but middle classes, peasants and capitalists, not only the productive classes but the warrior caste.
Fascism and the Middle Classes: Scott Nearing, [1] Leon Trotsky and other writers assert that Fascism is to a great extent a movement of the middle classes. But the middle classes do not come into power alone, but with the goodwill and active help of finance capital. Both in Italy and in Germany two independent movements, one of the middle class and the other of the finance capitalists, can be seen moving towards some such solution of their difficulties as Fascism provides. They remain separate for years. They come together because they want at all costs to avoid a proletarian revolution. But middle class and capitalist retain their mutually incompatible aims despite this apparent unity.
John Strachey, in his interesting book, The Menace of Fascism, says:
Naturally this talk of favouring the small producer at the expense of the big producer directly contradicts all the planning, corporate-state side of Fascist propaganda. It would, if it were put into effect, actually destroy just the trusts, holding companies, cartels and the like, which are always held up to us as the germs of planning under capitalism.
This is actually true, but it does not prove the absence of a middle-class policy – only the presence of this contradiction. It shows that the forces behind and within Fascism are not homogeneous. Their mutual friction, as we have said, is one of the important features of Fascism. The Fascist movement holds together these incompatible elements, balancing them one against the other, keeping them united, without solving the contradictions until the war comes, because only in this way can the equilibrium be achieved which is so necessary a part of the preparation for war.
In Germany, the most articulate section of the middle classes were the shopkeepers. They even provided a ‘Fighting League of the Middle Class’. Their constructive ideas were those of the medieval guilds, rigidly enforced price lists and the exclusion of competition by new traders. But they were very clear about what they hated – the departmental stores and the cooperative societies. In Italy they smashed the cooperative premises where they could. In Germany they were behind the boycott of the Jewish departmental stores. But they went too far.
The organisation was dissolved in June 1933, though the prohibition against opening new shops remained in force until July 1934. The Nazis took over the cooperative stores and had to defend them, although in a year they lost 33 per cent of their trade. In the same way they had to keep employment going in the big stores and actually gave loans to some of the large Jewish firms, at the same time putting Nazi directors on their boards. These stores lost 18.4 per cent of their trade in the first complete year of National Socialism.
The professional and technical middle classes received a certain advantage in the posts which were taken from the Social-Democrats and the Jews.
But the total advantage of Fascism to the middle classes cannot be measured only in what they hope to get, but in what they want to avoid. Many of the functions performed by a middle class are so definitely parasitic that social status occupies an entirely disproportionate place in their minds. They will let go bread itself to prevent themselves ‘sinking to the level of the proletariat’, which is precisely what would happen to them under Communism. Under Communism the middle classes, as they have known themselves, are totally destroyed as a class.
Unfortunately, by indiscriminately lumping together the professional and technical sections with the parasites as ‘class enemies’, the workers tend to alienate a section which they need, and which, as the Russians are now finding, it would have been cheaper to bribe than to ‘liquidate’. This type of middle class are not frightened rentiers – they are not only driven, but are themselves a formidable driving force.
It needs no deep dark capitalist plot, such as that for which Thyssen has been made responsible, to mobilise these people, when they have their backs against the wall – as the ruined middle class certainly had in Germany.
Fascism and the Peasants: The fact that nowhere for long has the Marxian movement been able to secure the support of the peasantry is a significant fact. In the early days of the Russian Revolution the peasants were with Lenin, who, supreme revolutionary leader as he was, gave them what they wanted – peace and land – and made no fuss about it. But had Lenin lived he would have had to face the problem which has caused such endless difficulties to his successors.
The difficulty is that Marxism arose as a theory and a faith of the town worker. Marx himself knew and cared little about the country – he speaks of the ‘stupidity of country life’. To the town worker with his regular hours, his interests, and politics, meetings and amusements, the countryman seems slow and often unintelligent, or over-cautious and conservative. The proletarian thinks in terms of masses and machinery, the peasant in terms of the individual, and the growing earth – and nature, that takes little heed of even unanimous resolutions.
Thus, there is to begin with a real cleavage between town and country. It is not that the Marxist analysis will not fit the facts of agricultural economics – that would be in itself a criticism of the theory. But that sufficient thought has not yet been given to its application in terms that the countryman can understand and appreciate.
The traits of the peasant which create the problem for the Marxist make opportunities for such a creed as the Nazis – but only if they can represent themselves as the saviours from the feared ‘atheistical’ Communists. For the peasant left to himself would prefer neither. He wants to stay as he is.
But in a Fascist state the peasants have a very important role. They are appreciated as a comparatively stable element to offset the unrest in the towns. Still more important, a regime that has war as its ultimate object must stimulate the home-produced food supply. The main condition of autarchy is a flourishing home agriculture. The country is also important for fresh supplies of human stock. The population statistics show that even the healthy towns ‘eat up’ population. The great cities would die out in a few generations if people did not come in continually from the land. Hitler takes every suitable opportunity to proclaim that the peasants are the pillar of the nation – that the German people might exist without the towns, but not without peasants. He calls the towns ‘the graves of the people’s life’.
Italian Fascism and the Peasants: Italian Fascism first grew in the countryside. Twenty-eight per cent landed proprietors and 41 per cent tenants were saved from 30 per cent labourers. The gross total achievements were the raising of the standard of productivity, a certain splitting up of the latifundia and formation of cooperative agriculture.
In 1925, Mussolini decided that Italy would grow the wheat she formerly imported. In careful copy of the best Communist models, this was styled ‘the battle for the wheat’. Since in the old wheat-growing country the area used for wheat cultivation could not be extended, the production had to be increased by intensification. The average yield per hectare [2] and the total production [3] rose considerably. The consumption of wheat rose from 65 kg per head in prewar times to 180 kg today, at the expense of the consumption of potatoes, barley, maize, etc. In all fields of agriculture the yield per hectare has been increased by the introduction of scientific methods.
Some of the latifundia, the great farming estates, are being gradually, but extremely slowly, split up. In 1923, 43,255 square miles were in process of transformation. The draining of the Pontinic Marshes and their transformation to agricultural land has been a big thing – as propaganda. In the creation of rural colonies and land improvement the Fascists have continued the work of their predecessors. By the Lex Mussolini, 1928, the state has undertaken a considerable share of the cost involved, for example, 75 per cent in the construction of rural aqueducts, about 40 per cent for irrigation works, and roads, and 25 to 30 per cent for the construction of new villages. The works proposed by this law are estimated to cost seven milliard lira, of which four milliard have to be provided by the state and distributed over 30 years.
A land improvement scheme is decided upon by a consortium, which consists of at least 25 per cent of the proprietors concerned and represents them all. The Ministry must approve of the scheme. Resisting landowners can be, and are sometimes, expropriated. These consortiums frequently transfer their work to speculating companies who make great profits by buying the land cheap, taking the government subsidy for the work and selling the land to the peasants.
Over 1000 consortiums were founded about 1928, whose work was concerned with about 3,500,000 hectares. Their finances are often very bad; the Ministry pays 50 per cent of the costs. The remainder has to be borrowed and the Italian peasant is usually loaded with debt to begin with.
Once the work is finished, there is no obligation on the proprietor of the land to return to the state any proportion of the benefits which may accrue. Though private enterprise is restricted when the work is initiated and while it is actually being carried through, the private owner is regarded as completely independent once the work is finished.
Cooperative farming is encouraged. Numerous cooperative societies exist for the purpose of purchasing farm requirements and of selling farm products. One-fourth of the butter and cheese and most of the milk production is sold collectively. The cooperatives, whose dry milk concerns handle about one-fifth of the national production. [4]
German Fascism and the Peasants: The Nazis began to realise the necessity of making a big bid for countryside support only in 1928. Their original programme had only contained one point about the land:
We demand land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes; the abolition of interest on land loans, and the prevention of all speculation in land.
The words ‘confiscation without compensation’ raised a great deal of suspicion in quarters that had begun to realise that the Nazi movement might be used to prevent just this sort of thing. Hitler, therefore, in a declaration issued in April 1928 to ‘reply to the false interpretation on the part of opponents’, obligingly explained that ‘since the NSDAP admits the principle of private property’, the expression ‘confiscation without compensation’ merely refers to possible legal powers to confiscate, if necessary, land illegally acquired or not administered in accordance with national welfare. ‘It is directed in the first instance against the Jewish companies which speculate in land.’
This might mean anything, but it had the effect of opening the countryside to the Nazis, whose propagandists made it very clear that they were not proposing any land nationalisation schemes.
The agrarian crisis which started in Germany in 1927 became alarming. The Nazis had to do something to cash in on this discontent. By 1930 they had worked out an agrarian programme which promised protection of landed property against taxation, and against banks and speculators; the reduction of interest on agricultural loans; higher prices for agrarian produce and lower prices for artificial fertilisers. The individualism of the peasant is expressly recognised. Collective action is to be taken only with his consent and is mainly limited to a supervision of the village to make sure that all land is used – a point about which the peasant is always eager. This programme proved very attractive, and soon the peasants were for Hitler. Even as late as 1932 it might still have been possible to get a proletarian revolution in the big towns. Owing to the success of the Nazi agrarian programme and propaganda this would soon have been starved out by the country.
When the Nazis got power one of their first actions was to raise the import duty on livestock, meat, lard and bacon by 100 per cent to 500 per cent. The prices for fats were raised at once. Whoever had to wait for the promised boons, the Nazis were determined to satisfy the food-producers. The Nazis also wanted a reduction of the rate of agricultural loans interest to two per cent. Hugenberg wanted to help them only by raising prices. He had his bankers to think of. He reduced the interest to 4.5 per cent. Thus the help for the peasant came mostly from the workers of the towns who had to pay the higher prices, and only in part from banking capital. The Nazi proposals could not be carried through against the threats of banking capital that any lower rate of interest would mean a loss of confidence. The 4.5 per cent was at any rate a considerable improvement on the 10 to 15 per cent which he had been paying. All debts over 50 per cent of the value of the farm were cancelled.
In September 1933, a law regulating the inheritance of farms was extended to the whole of Germany. The Nazis wanted to prevent the splitting up of farms among the sons. Peasant estates cannot now be divided and sold, nor confiscated for debt.
It is obvious that such legislation creates as many problems as it is likely to solve. If a farm cannot be foreclosed upon then it cannot be mortgaged. Money cannot be raised upon it as security.
Agriculture is now the most planned part of the German economic system. With its immediately subsidiary trades it is put into one corporation or syndicate which dictates the prices for wheat and corn, and which specifies the areas to be used in producing them. In 1933 agriculture received one milliard more marks than in 1932, estimated as follows:
Million marks By way of bigger harvest 100 By way of raised prices 690 By way of subventions 265 By way of tax remission 122 Total 1177
It is estimated that the greater part of this increased income was used to pay debts, and so benefited finance capital, but gave a freer feeling to the peasants. The price for butter went up by 46 per cent, of pork by 36 per cent. The consumption of sugar in the Reich, despite the enormous fall in the world price of this commodity, went down by 30 per cent – and this gives the key as to who paid for the Nazi land programme. Obviously most came from the workers who were still in employment, and the poorer middle classes to whom any increase in prices meant a real sacrifice. The Nazis urged that any increase in the purchasing power of the countryside would be sooner or later felt in the increased employment due to the improved demand for industrial products. But if, as is admitted, the immediate effect of the increased share of the country went in the payment of debts, the industrial workers will have to wait for some time for that to affect them – even if it really could make much difference to the enormous unemployment in Germany. But the increased food prices had to be paid at once.
Some of the hardship to certain of the unemployed (that is, those who were on relief and able to ask for it) was mitigated by the issue of ration cards to enable them to get margarine at the old price. The shopkeeper could then get the difference from the local relief authority.
On the whole it may be said that the Nazis have been prepared to bid high for the support of the peasantry, and that up to now they have secured this fairly solidly. The Nazis have no objection to sacrificing the interests of the town proletariat as far as is necessary to keep the peasants, for it is among the town workers that their support is least strong. Neither the Social-Democrats nor the Communists could or would have paid this price for the backing of the country – as their voting records show.
Hitler keeps up the flattery of the countryman and does everything he can to bring the possibly subversive town elements into contact with the country. Many workers are sent as land-helpers to the country. All Prussian children have to work for one year on the land after passing through school. It is impossible not to feel that this will be a source of cheap, easily exploitable labour for the farmer. The labour camps provide another. The abolishing of unemployment in East Prussia meant in fact the conscription of the unemployed as practically slave labour for the big landowners. The Nazis have not solved the contradiction of the antagonism between town and country. They have simply favoured the side they needed most.
Socialism With the Capitalists: In the Fascist state the capitalists are regarded as one of the pillars of their ‘Socialism’. Fascist ‘Socialism’ recognises the value of private enterprise. In the Italian Charter of Labour, freedom of initiative of the employer is regarded as ‘the most effective and valuable instrument in the interests of the nation’. Hitler stated this more fully in a speech when he said:
It will be the principle of the government to revive the economic interest of the nation, not through bureaucratic institutions organised by the state, but by encouragement of the private initiative and under acknowledgment of private property.
To the Marxist the idea of private enterprise and socialistic reconstruction are contradictory. The Fascist argument is that freedom of initiative of the employer is necessary to prevent bureaucratic stagnation; that the individual can more quickly adapt production to the changing needs of the market, and if he fails then he pays for that failure himself by his own bankruptcy without endangering the whole industry. The Fascists declare that the principle of leadership, with the right of the leader to make his own decisions, is needed as much in industry as in war. The leaders of industry, they consider, have already been chosen in practice by their own success.
Now the upholders of private initiative have a certain case, as Socialists frankly admit, though the weaknesses of it we shall discuss in Part III. It is, however, rather interesting to find the men who revile Liberalism repeating so solemnly the basic Liberal argument. But when the Fascists declare that for private initiative to function the institution of private property must be maintained, their case breaks down. For, as is shown everywhere in the modern world, the most energetic initiative is not necessarily linked up in any way, except by the drawing of a salary, with the property which it controls and extends. Every municipal and state enterprise, the managing officials of any big trust, display initiative about property which either is not theirs at all, or belongs in the main to other people.
The Fascist argument, in spite of its weakness, is attractive to many middle-class people because they do not draw any distinction between the private ownership of consumption goods, and production goods. ‘Why should I not own my own house? Would I be able to ride my own motor-bicycle under Socialism or would I have to draw one from the common store which anyone might have used and spoiled?’ This sort of argument is invariably met with in discussions with the fairly comfortable circumstanced people who have joined the Fascist movements in such numbers. The point is that who controls the means of production controls power, the source of profit. The possession of even large quantities of goods for their own private consumption does not give that ultimate power.
But when to private initiative based on private property the Fascists then insist on the retaining of private profit, because, it is said, that without this reward private initiative will not function, then they begin to look like the ordinary capitalists whose system they claim to replace. But the Fascists claim that they are not ordinary capitalists since they restrict private ownership. There can be, in fact there obviously are, degrees of private ownership. It is possible to restrict the rights of ownership and to influence the direction of its functioning. And this the Fascists by their schemes of planning actually do.
They claim the right to restrict the rights of private property ‘where these are not in the interests of the community’ and of the ‘nation as a whole’. The enforcement by the state of the decisions of industrial cartels, the fixing of prices, and the control, whether of crops or of foreign imports, are all part of these restrictions. More indirect are their attempts to influence the way in which private ownership shall function by remissions of taxation and by subsidies.
It may be objected that these restrictions on capital as far as they exist are for the benefit of capital, and that claim is examined elsewhere. The problem here is whether the Fascist schemes of planning are nearer to Socialist planning than the unfettered operations of anarchic capitalism.
The ‘Socialism’ of the Warriors: Because the Socialism of the Fascists is built on Imperialism it regards the warriors as well as the workers as being the most important people in the state. In Germany, as in other countries, the war put the different classes together in the trenches. Many members of the ruling and privileged classes managed to keep away from the battle areas, and this tendency increased as the war grew more and more devastating. But, on the other hand, the middle-class people were, on the whole, enthusiastically for the war, and took their share of the fighting and of the hardships of the front. Thus a certain comradeship, common privation and danger brought a common bond between classes that in times of peace do not see much of each other. This was one aspect of the war. The other was the differences between the classes favouring the officers in pay and food, which was accentuated as the supplies grew scarce – a state of affairs which contributed materially to the revolution.
As in every European army, these opposite tendencies existed at the same time. The Marxists stressed the difference between officers and men, the Nazis stressed the comradeship and attempted to make a myth out of the ‘Spirit of the Front’, which of course seemed the more attractive as the remembrance of the hardships grew fainter. The Nazis were clever enough to revive this spirit of ‘comradeship in danger’ in their Storm Troopers. When the sons of the unemployed and the sons of the shopkeepers marched together through the streets, fought off the attacks of opponents, stood together in memory of dead comrades, and went through all the familiar ritual that had meant so much during the war, some of the old fusion of feeling came back.
The Socialism of the warrior caste is based on the rough share-and-share-alike of the barracks. There is no theory about it. It is not based on common production, but on common destruction and common danger. Because of that danger and hardship the modern citizen army must have less class distinctions if the soldiers are to be effective. The years 1914-18 made that clear for all future wars.
A certain antipathy to capitalism, as such, is inherent in the ideology of every soldier. He is furious at ‘fat profiteers’ who make their fortunes while he and his comrades are in danger. He has a certain contempt for the peaceful bourgeois and his ‘business as usual’ mottoes. He feels that the capitalist has no honour – that code on which his whole life and training are based. ‘On the word of a soldier’ means something, but whoever gave as surety ‘on the word of a capitalist'? The Rotary Clubs of business men have realised something of this when they adopted as their motto ‘Service Before Self’. But in the world of common speech a business man has no ‘honour’. He has only ‘credit’.
‘In a state based on power the soldier must play the leading part before the politician.’ That was the creed of Röhm, the Nazi leader. But it can be transported to the other side of the world; and in Japan, the Prussia of the East, we see a state where the ideals that lie beneath the Nazi attitude to the soldier are being worked out in detail that corresponds with curious exactness to the Prussian model.
In Japan there is the dominance of the military spirit, with all its conventional traditions of honour, and of contempt for death. The leaders of the military caste who have now the upper hand simply cannot understand why the entire budget is not devoted to military expenditure. These are the men in the Samurai tradition of warfare, where battles took place between the clans, and where workers, in the sense of a modern proletariat, hardly entered their distinguished consciousness.
On the other hand, there is the Japan where monopoly capitalism has been concentrated into the hands of a small group of leading families. Japanese capitalism has a predominantly agrarian basis, and is actually eating up the country. The peasantry is being ruined by the operations of this monopolised finance-capital, which then declares to the world that Japan has such a density of population that it cannot possibly feed its people. The real fact is that Japanese soil cannot feed its peasantry under the conditions which Japanese finance-capital has created.
The position is that Japanese capitalism, not the Japanese nation, has got to expand or go bankrupt. The contradictions of her capitalism have to be solved as Cæsar attempted to solve those of Rome. The military caste and finance-capitalism joyfully joined together to take Manchukuo. The generals think that any expense is justified to keep it, but the capitalists are finding that the adventure is terribly expensive. Manchukuo is a heavy liability and the problem is whether it can be made to pay as a colony before Japan herself goes bankrupt. It is very doubtful whether their brutal methods can produce this desirable effect in time.
Japanese militarism and Japanese capitalism are now, for somewhat different reasons, faced with the Napoleonic dilemma. They have to go further to keep what they have got. The pressure of the 400 million of Chinese is felt from the south. To relieve this pressure it is necessary to make the whole of Manchukuo, the Soviet Far Eastern Republic, and North Sakhalin (where the oil is), all part of the Japanese Empire. A glance at the map will show how convenient a unit this would be for Japan to administer. But to do this, she must cut the Russian communication, not merely at the Chinese Eastern Railway, but as far west as the Yenesei (see map). Can the Japanese with their 70 million undertake such a task? But how big was Prussia when it started out to dominate Europe?
An adventure of this kind, involving as the Nazi policy does the transforming of the whole nation into a battering ram, cannot be an affair of an officer caste, however personally brave, or of a small group of capitalists, however wealthy. Araki realised, as Hitler and as Mussolini have done, that an operation of this magnitude could only be carried out on a mass basis. A modern proletariat, with a peasantry influenced to however small a degree by modern thought, and discontented by the extortions of finance-capitalism, simply could not be treated like the old Samurai (or the East Prussian Junkers) treated their clan or tribal followers. So Araki set to work to devise an ‘Imperial Communism’ which he called Kodo – the Way of the Emperor – to distinguish it from the old religion of Shinto – the Way of the Gods.
Kodo has some striking resemblances to Nazism. Araki claimed that by it could be secured the equality of all citizens in military organisations which comprise the whole population and give to the man in the street equality with the Samurai. [5]
The capitalists began to be afraid of the size of the risks that Araki’s policy opened before them, exactly as the bourgeoisie were worried about the risks of the Bismarck policy, though they profited handsomely by it later. The militarists were impatient, declaring that they were not fighting for capitalist profits, but for the glory of the Emperor. The capitalist group at last got rid of Araki, who resigned early in 1934, and his downfall coincided with a meek note to the powers declaring the pacifist intentions of Japan, exactly as one of Hitler’s speeches would be broadcast to reassure the world. But not long after came the Note claiming full powers over China.
1. Scott Nearing, Fascism (New York, 1932).
2. Average wheat yield per hectare:
Prewar 10.5 1928 12.5 1931 13.8 1932 15.2
At an average yield of 16 to 17, Italy need not import any more wheat.
3. Wheat total production (million quintuli average):
1909-13 50.4 1927-32 62.2 1932 75.0 1933 85.0
4. Further details in Karl Walter, Cooperation in Changing Italy (London, 1934). [The last sentence of this paragraph appears garbled in the original text – MIA.]
5. See Maurice Lachin, Japan, 1934 (Paris, 1934).